Valiantsin Stefanovich: MEPs should seek meetings with political prisoners

During his meeting
with the Lithuanian MEP Justas Paleckis, Valiantsin Stefanovich, Deputy Chairman
of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”, raised the issue of political prisoners. “I
referred to our joint report with the International Federation for Human Rights,
which has recently been prepared. We talked mainly about the situation of
political prisoners. But not only about that,” said Valiantsin Stefanovich in
his comments to Radio Racyja.

“We state
that 40 people today have some kind of restrictions as a result of political
persecution. To identify the problem of not only political prisoners, who are now
in prisons, which, of course, worries us most of all, but in general, the problem
of unexpunged convictions. What we demand is to expunge convictions, i.e.
political rehabilitation... He did not speak a lot, he listened instead. He asked,
for example, about future visits of delegations of MEPs: if they should ask for
permission to meet with political prisoners.

According
to Valiantsin Stefanovich, the opportunity to meet with political prisoners
depends entirely on the will of the authorities. This opportunity exists. “There
were precedents when diplomats met with Belarusian political prisoners.
Recently, some of them were visited by the Papal Nuncio,” stresses Valiantsin
Stefanovich. According to the human rights defender, he said that efforts
should be made to seek such meetings to emphasize the importance of the issue
of political prisoners from the EU’s side.